Thu, 12 Jun 2014

They want to dig across the driveway. They say the first installer
didn't know anything, he was wrong about not being able to use the box
that's already on this side of the road. They say they can run a cable
from the other side of the road through an existing conduit to the box
by the neighbor's driveway, then dig a trench across the driveway to
run the cable to the old location next to the garage.

They don't need to dig across the road since there's an existing conduit;
they don't even need to park in the road. So no need for a permit.

We warn them we're planning to have driveway work done, so the
driveway is going to be dug up at some point, and they need to put it
as deep as possible. We even admit that we've signed a contract with
CenturyLink for DSL. No problem, they say, they're being paid by
Comcast to run this cable, so they'll go ahead and do it.

We shrug and say fine, go for it.
We figure we'll mark the trench across the driveway afterward, and when
we finally have the driveway graded, we'll make sure the graders know
about the buried cable. They do the job, which takes less than an hour.

If they're right that this setup works, that means, of course, that
this could have been done back in February or any time since then.
There was no need to wait for a permit, let alone a need to wait for
someone to get around to applying for a permit.

So now, almost exactly 4 months after the first installer came out, we
may have a working cable installed. No way to know for sure, since
we've been happily using DSL for over a month. But perhaps we'll find
out some day.